A Model Life

There's a theory among women that you can't have the "Big Three" all at the one time. If you have a stellar career and a killer apartment, there's no way you get the perfect partner, as well.

Try explaining that to Miranda Kerr.

Miranda is one of Australia's most successful modelling exports. She lives in a Hollywood mansion and she's married to heart throb actor Orlando Bloom. Plus, they're expecting their first child early next year.

CHARLES WOOLEY: It's a winter sunset on the Californian shore - half a world and a whole Pacific Ocean away from home for Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Do you get homesick?

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah, of course, especially now that I'm having a baby, I miss my family terribly. It's crazy how far away it is.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You have come a long way.

MIRANDA KERR: I have come a long way. It's quite mind-boggling when you actually sit down and think about it - a little country girl.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Yep. It's so mind-boggling, I've accepted the hardship job of having to come over here to talk to you about it.

MIRANDA KERR: Well, that's lucky you, huh?

CHARLES WOOLEY: Yeah, lucky me, and lucky her. She is, of course, one of the world's richest supermodels, and it does seem a delightful irony that the less she wears, the more she gets paid.

CHARLES WOOLEY: At the end, it's just a job though, isn't it?

MIRANDA KERR: Oh, you can't take yourself seriously. You just have to have fun with it. It's nothing to take seriously.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Does it seem extraordinary to you that people are prepared to pay so much for someone like you - and you will only earn more - when someone in cancer research, for instance, earns so little?

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah, it is. It baffles me. Honestly, it does, but what can I say?

CHARLES WOOLEY: Well, what can you say except that, basically, here is an uncomplicated, Australian girl-next-door who got hooked up with the world's biggest sexy underwear company, Victoria's Secret.

MIRANDA KERR: The exposure that you get from being a Victoria's Secret 'angel' is huge, so, they've definitely been a major part in my career.

CHARLES WOOLEY: The exposure has propelled Miranda into the international spotlight and onto the cover of dozens of magazines worldwide - all a bewilderingly far cry from growing up in the small town of Gunnedah, in NSW, in a tight-knit country family.

MIRANDA KERR: Remember when I used to take off in the old car around the paddock? ANNE KERR, GRANDMOTHER: Oh, yes, yes.

MIRANDA KERR: And I'd say, "Nan, can I drive?"

ANNE KERR: They all learnt to drive out on the farm.

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah, I must've been about eight or nine years old. As soon as I could see over the steering wheel.

ANNE KERR: We had an old Hillman Minx, and if they bashed it up, it wouldn't matter, you know?

CHARLES WOOLEY: You finish one another's sentences. It's a completely fluid conversation. There's nowhere for me to go! I'm with Miranda, her mum, Therese, and her grandmother, Anne, in LA, where wives doing lunch is an institution. It might be low-cal and mineral water, but an old journo could maybe get a lead or two when three generations of Kerr women get talking.

ANNE KERR: I go into the supermarket, soon as I walk in, "Nan!" And they're waving, "Miranda's in this book!" "Oh, righto, love. "Well, put it down, and I'll get it on the way out." I think, "Oh, she's really costing me a fortune with these books!" Now she's in 'Vogue' and they're not cheap books any more! And that on top of the groceries! Bit much!

CHARLES WOOLEY: In the tightly controlled world of superstar celebrity, Granny is a delightfully loose canon.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Nan, can I ask you about Victoria's Secret and the kind of clothing that Miranda's called upon.

ANNE KERR: I nearly died when I saw Victoria's Secrets! Not my Miranda!

MIRANDA KERR: Oh, great!

ANNE KERR: But, like everything, you've got to get used to these kind of things, if that's the kind of work she does.

MIRANDA KERR: But it's respectful, and it's fun, and you love it!

ANNE KERR: Oh, yeah, but it was a shock to start with.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Some of Gran's reservations about the modelling life were initially shared by Miranda's mother, Therese, a publican's daughter from Gunnedah. When Miranda wanted to enter a 'Dolly' magazine modelling competition at the age of 13, her mum even threw in some unflattering shots to sabotage her.

THERESE KERR: Miranda never always had the most beautiful teeth that she's got now. She had beautiful teeth, but they just weren't perfect.

MIRANDA KERR: I had braces.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Right.

THERESE KERR: I put in photos that showed her crooked teeth!

CHARLES WOOLEY: You tried to knobble her?

THERESE KERR: Yeah. Through my own preconceived ideas of the industry, and I was just wanted to protect my daughter. And I thought, "Oh, well, I'll throw a couple of photos in." She won anyway.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Not long after, it was goodbye to Gunnedah and the beginning of an international career that's taken her around the world.

MIRANDA KERR: And the great thing about the choices that I've made is that, you know, modelling gave me a face, and with the face came a voice, and with that voice, hopefully, I can make a positive difference.

CHARLES WOOLEY: In Hollywood, couples morph into acronyms. There's 'Brangelina', there's 'Tomkat', and now there is 'Kerbloom'. Celebrity conjugation of our Miranda Kerr with the English-born Hollywood heart-throb, the actor Orlando Bloom.

CHARLES WOOLEY: How did you meet Orlando?

MIRANDA KERR: We met in LA four years ago, and we were friends at first for about six months. And, then, um, here we are now, four years later, together, very happy, and a little one on the way.

CHARLES WOOLEY: That's terrific.

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Do you know whether it's a little Orlando or a little Miranda?

MIRANDA KERR: No, we're keeping it a little -

CHARLES WOOLEY: A big secret?

MIRANDA KERR: Keeping it, yeah, a secret, a surprise.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Nan, is Orlando Bloom suitable? Is he good enough for our girl?

ANNE KERR: Well, so far, I see he's very kind, very gentle, very good to Miranda. Mind you, like any married couple, you'll hear raised voices.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Despite the 'Kerbloom' baby, well on the way with only a month to go, Miranda was still working her famous trademark dimples at an LA photoshoot this week. Before motherhood, this was, she promised, her last shot.

MIRANDA KERR: Before the baby, I was working six days a week, pretty much at least two different cities, if not two different countries a week, and it's pretty full-on. But, you know what? It is a short opportunity, and you take it while you can.

CHARLES WOOLEY: I was going to say, I was wondering the diplomatic way of saying, do you have to may hay while the sun shines?

MIRANDA KERR: You have to make hay while the sun shines, yeah, definitely.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Why does it have to be short? I mean, the market is more than girls between 24 and 30-something, isn't it?

MIRANDA KERR: It is. And, I mean, people like Elle Macpherson have taken it a lot further and, you know, who really knows? But I don't want to be working to that extent, to the extreme that I have been for the rest of my life.

CHARLES WOOLEY: And, if things go to plan, she won't have to. Miranda recently published a self-help book, 'Treasure Yourself. And has launched her own organic cosmetics company, KORA, aimed at teenage girls. Little wonder then she's brought me to this Californian health food store, where the promise of restoration and a long, bland vegetarian life positively leaps off the shelves.

MIRANDA KERR: And what about a sleepy-time tea as well? So you've got one to wake you up and one that's going to help you with the jet lag?

CHARLES WOOLEY: Despite - Miranda's been lecturing me about diet for a while now.

MIRANDA KERR: Oh, I wouldn't say 'lecture'!

CHARLES WOOLEY: Well, 'advising'. But you can't beat breeding and genes, can you? I mean, it's just so obvious where you came from.

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah. Well, definitely, thank you.

CHARLES WOOLEY: And it wasn't out of a health food store! It's from these really good sheilas! Look at them. Look at the great bone structure and the good looks.

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah, they are. I'm very blessed.

ANNE KERR: We should have had our men here, too. The grandfather - he's handsome.

THERESE KERR: And Miranda's dad is beautiful.

CHARLES WOOLEY: So, Miranda, nothing to do with you! With such good breeding on display, who could blame that hapless Macquarie banker, caught on camera during a live news bulletin, admiring Miranda's latest shots? NEWS ANCHORl: You know, he's one of the only bankers in the world people are rooting for!

CHARLES WOOLEY: Certainly Miranda felt that this was not a hanging offence and she said so.

MIRANDA KERR: I said publicly that I didn't want him to lose his job. He's a human being and, being human, he just opened his mail, and I was quite, you know, I was quite flattered by the whole thing!

CHARLES WOOLEY: Did he ever get in touch with you and say, "Thank you, Miranda"?

MIRANDA KERR: No.

CHARLES WOOLEY: That's bankers for you, isn't it?

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah, that's right! Yeah.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Celebrity always comes with all the obvious pitfalls but Miranda Kerr seems to have her feet planted surely on the catwalk of life. She knows where she comes from, and that makes her all the more certain about where she's going.

MIRANDA KERR: I've travelled the world and, you know, have been leading this so-called glamorous life, but I really appreciate the simple things in life. And they're the things that we need, like good food and, ah, good, clean water and love.

MIRANDA KERR: This little one - the baby.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Can I feel?

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah! Of course.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Is there any activity?

MIRANDA KERR: Oh, yeah, a lot. Do you feel any kicking? Baby's sleeping.

CHARLES WOOLEY: It's sleeping. Stay that way, kid! Sleeping babies!

MIRANDA KERR: Sleeping babies are good, yeah.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This is great end shot for our story, isn't it?

MIRANDA KERR: Yeah.

CHARLES WOOLEY: "As the sun sets slowly in the west, "we say goodbye to the 'Girl from Gunnedah'."